Degree
Bachelor of Science (B.S.)
Major(s)
Secondary English Education
Document Type
Immediate Campus-Only Restricted Access
Abstract
For centuries, Ovid’s Pygmalion myth has been repeatedly restaged as a narrative of artistic creation and miraculous transformation. Yet beneath its aesthetic surface lies a persistent ethical conflict: the transformation of a woman into a male’s ideal form requires the erasure of her voice, agency, and identity. This thesis examines how the Pygmalion myth structures the coercive dynamics of transformation in William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, tracing how each retelling adapts the myth to preserve patriarchal authority under new pretenses of improvement and education. Through close analysis of environmental, psychological, and linguistic manipulation, I argue that Petruchio and Higgins inherit Pygmalion’s role as creators who reshape women according to their own designs. Whereas Petruchio enacts Katherine’s transformation through deprivation, humiliation, and control of perception, Higgins orchestrates Eliza’s transformation through refinement, indulgence, and linguistic discipline. Across both plays, transformation becomes a mechanism of coercive control disguised as benevolence, revealing that the cost of artistic “perfection” is the woman’s selfhood. In exposing how critics and adaptations frequently sentimentalize these endings to reassert male authority, this thesis explores a continuing cultural impulse to romanticize female submission. Ultimately, the Pygmalion story remains compelling not because it celebrates creation, but because it idealizes domination, positioning the erasure of a woman’s identity and voice as a spectacle worthy of praise.
Date Defended
11-19-2025
Thesis Director
Eric Vivier, Ph.D.
Second Committee Member
Kelly Marsh, Ph.D.
Third Committee Member
Christopher Snyder, Ph.D.
Recommended Citation
Harman, Elena, "The Art of Making a Woman in Shakespeare and Shaw" (2025). Honors Theses. 187.
https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/honorstheses/187
